IS THIS OUR BARBADOS? Let’s look at a normal day nowadays. You wake in a good mood, feeling like you could conquer the world. But if you want to retain that mood, don’t venture out, don’t read the newspaper,
Of course, sometimes you must venture out, so you set out with your list, confident that you can easily achieve your day’s objectives. But reality quickly sets in. First you’re met by solid traffic and a proliferation of potholes thrown in for good measure.
Then you finally reach your bank to make a deposit, to find that the instruction you gave for the account six months ago still hasn’t been carried out and your file can’t be found. Yet not a soul seems perturbed.
To give the end to that story, you wait a week or two and still haven’t heard anything so you march into the manager’s office unannounced, apologising for this unheard-of action, and the matter is settled in a few days, although you need to complete an additional form.
You make two attempts to do this but on both occasions the bank has closed early for some meeting or other. Then the manager goes on holiday and no one in the bank has a clue about what you’re talking about. Heaven help you if the manager were to pass away or be transferred! Still haven’t achieved completing this task after over a month.
You travel on to your doctor’s appointment and sit for an hour and a quarter before you’re seen. Then you proceed to another bank where you stand in line for about 30 minutes to complete a one-minute transaction.
You then try to contact a private sector company. You call four numbers (including the PBX) and receive no answer from either number. This is the norm these days. If you have to contact four people by telephone, it can take a whole day. Banks are particularly difficult since in most cases you can’t reach them directly – you must go through a call centre in some distant land whose staff are of little help. It even seems as if some transactions on your account must pass through a regional branch first. Of course, if you try to reach a Government office, you can safely multiply the degree of difficulty by at least ten.
This matter of business places closing early for meetings seems to be standard procedure these days. It never happened in the “good old days”. Even the teachers are having meetings during school hours now! I agree with the Ministry of Education 100 per cent for docking their pay. They have enough days off as it is.
Then of course there’s Flow. Each merger has led to additional pain for customers. Now we have another “fly in the telecommunications ointment” – not just the ordinary housefly, this is a big horsefly by the name of Liberty. But don’t be fooled by the name. You can be quite sure we won’t be liberated from our pain, but rather will become tied up in more knots while being treated to another colour change (probably costing a few million dollars) from the green LIME to the blue FLOW to who knows what . . . ? How long is Government through the Fair Trading Commission going to allow this “not so fair” behaviour?
But then amidst all this disorder, you find people who can remain serene. When you enquire how they’re able to tolerate such nonsense, they say they tell themselves that all these people are “doing their best”. All I can say is, if that’s the best we’re able to do in Barbados, God help us! As Winston Churchill noted, “it is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required”.
Nevertheless, we’re told Barbados is “growing”. What does that really mean? Surely beyond all the fancy terms like gross domestic product (GDP), which is used in the growth calculation, the ultimate objective of economic growth must be an improved standard of living. Does it seem as if our standard of living is improving? Funnily enough, I called the Central Bank sometime ago to check the figure for our GDP per capita and was told to check the Ministry of Finance, which I did and they referred me to the Central Bank. Makes one wonder!
• Dr Frances Chandler is a former Independent senator. Email: fchandler@caribsurf.com